


you're the sugar to my high

by scribblscrabbl



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, First Meetings, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 09:17:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3322058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblscrabbl/pseuds/scribblscrabbl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bakery AU.</p><p>In which life and love are never so simple as making a perfect croissant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're the sugar to my high

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mykmyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mykmyk/gifts).



> For arthureamesgiftexchange@tumblr and mykmyk who wanted an AU; hope you enjoy! I didn't even think this would break 5k, but here we are. I have no idea how opening/running a bakery works, but I love to bake so apparently I decided that makes me sufficiently qualified to write about it.

Arthur leaves his apartment and walks to the bakery at precisely 5:25 am. 

There’s rarely anyone on the streets at this ungodly hour, which to someone else might feel lonely or creepy, but to Arthur feels _liberating_. He takes distinct pleasure in the isolated sound of his footsteps on the cobblestone, in the utter stillness that precedes the day, like the city’s holding its breath in anticipation, and if that makes him a crazy person, so be it. Because this is when he looks around and thinks he’s maybe starting to figure out his life. That all the streets he’s walked so far have somehow worked to bring him here, to this quiet little corner of Paris that hasn’t rejected him or judged him or _expected_ something from him; it’s just let him be.

He gets to the bakery at 5:30 am, slips inside, letting the little brass bells jangle, and then gets to work. Not that anything he does constitutes a real job, a point his parents like to harp on every chance they get, even when they’re convinced it’s some kind of delayed onset quarter life crisis and he’ll come to his senses. He can hear it in his mother’s voice every time they talk, so he doesn’t call much anymore, mostly only when his sister guilt trips him, which really just makes him feel shittier because she does nothing to make him think she’s on his side.

Sometimes, he thinks the only thing he has is the bakery, and while that makes him feel unspeakably lonely some nights, it also makes him understand a little of what happiness should be, because nothing, _nothing_ compares to taking a perfect batch of croissants out of the oven or to watching a customer take a first bite out of Arthur’s madeleines. It makes him have faith in the world, _like_ the world a little more, because it somehow cared enough to give him this.

By 6:55 am, he’s dipped the macaroons, glazed the croissants, and dusted the madeleines. It took him two weeks of practicing dawn until dusk to get what he wanted when he wanted it, all without anything collapsing or burning or lighting on fire. Two weeks of sheer fucking panic and wondering if he really wouldn’t be better off pursuing a soul-crushing but stable career as a tax accountant. Mal had tried to get him to hire help but he’d glared at her with the intensity of a thousand suns so she dropped it, knowing what it came down to was pride. And as _stupid_ as it was, he’d emerged from the wreckage victorious, burned hands and all. It took him another two weeks to take on Ariadne, who, Arthur concedes, for all her griping about early shifts, hasn’t yet failed to be on time.

The bells chime again at 6:59 am. 

“Your adoring masses are starting to queue,” Ariadne announces as she walks into the kitchen, sounding perkier than usual, which makes Arthur narrow his eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to get someone to help out in the kitchen? The weekend lines are getting pretty long.” 

She hooks her bag on the wall and picks up the mini brioches and almond croissants to take out front.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, although he won’t. It’s the strategy he uses with Mal now that seems to be effective at keeping the pestering to a minimum. Saturday is always the craziest day with the most tourists coming around, asking him to recommend an authentic French pastry, to which he’s started to respond, blandly, with _a croissant_. On Saturdays he closes early, then goes home and takes a long bath with a lot of shitty wine, but it’s nothing he can’t handle.

The morning rush dies down around ten. Arthur leans against the counter, staring at Ariadne, who’s adding more change to the register and _whistling_ , and all of a sudden he gets an inkling.

“Oh my god, you got laid last night.”

She looks up and he can feel the self-satisfaction coming off her in waves. 

“Don’t sound so scandalized.”

“Who?” he demands. “The chem Ph.D.? Just last week you were moaning about how he was being tragically oblivious and you thought he might be gay.”

She shoots him a withering look. “ _You_ suggested Yusuf might be gay. Last night is proof that he is most definitely not. But he does have a gay friend. Hot, single, artist type who runs this awesome vinyl shop in the Latin Quarter.”

Arthur let Ariadne set him up on a blind date once, and it was one time too many. 

“Sounds like a hipster. I don’t do hipsters,” he says flatly, and heads back to the kitchen to quash any pending arguments.

“Arthur,” she says, a little pained, “you’re missing the point. He’s _single_. You don’t have to marry him for god’s—” 

She stops short when the door chimes, saving him from another one of her interventions where she tries to make him see that he’s in the prime of his life and potentially an amazing catch if he’d only just take off his fucking apron and live a little. 

It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate her, he really does. He liked her from the minute she negotiated her starting salary like selling pastries put her in a position to shatter glass ceilings. It’s just that she doesn’t _get_ it. For once he’d gone against everyone’s expectations and flown halfway around the world to make a risky gamble he had no reason to think would pay off, but it has. He’s built something from the ground up with his own two hands and, what’s more, he enjoys it. He fucking loves it, in fact, and that kind of love is something that only comes around once in a lifetime, if it comes around at all. Spending 12-hour days at the bakery is his definition of living a little, whether Ariadne thinks it’s a legitimate one or not.

“ _Can I help you make up your mind_?” she asks the customer, sounding unusually sweet. If Yusuf ends up sticking around, Arthur thinks he’s gonna have to lay some ground rules. Number one will definitely be _no whistling_. 

“ _I’m sorry, I speak very little French_.”

Arthur’s in the middle of tying his apron when the voice makes him freeze. The accent is heinous but the _voice_. The voice flows into the kitchen and slides over him like thick dark chocolate that he wants to hold in his mouth, bitter and decadent, with a kick of cinnamon and chili and cayenne. The voice makes him _tingle_ and he thinks maybe he needs to start getting more sleep because, what the fuck, he must be hallucinating. Still it doesn’t stop him from shuffling a little closer to the doorway.

“I can help you make up your mind, if you like,” Ariadne repeats patiently in English.

“Oh, thank you very much. I’ll probably end up trying them all but I’m torn about where to start.” The voice is apparently British. The voice is even more delicious now that it’s settled with relief into a language it knows, and Arthur finds it all very distressing.

“I’d suggest the plain croissant first then working your way up the sweetness scale. That way you get a nice, steady surge in your blood sugar levels.”

“Brilliant. The plain croissant it is.” 

Arthur hears the crinkling of the pastry bag before he hears, “oh, god,” followed by a low, drawn-out groan that _rumbles_ in the man’s throat, making Arthur feel a little faint and then completely ridiculous, hiding behind the wall like a creeper, and he resists, barely, the urge to bang his head against the wall, concluding that Ariadne is probably right. He probably needs to get out more.

“God, this is the best croissant I’ve ever had. You always find the hidden gems when you’re lost and too stubborn to ask for directions.” Arthur smiles a little at that and finishes tying his apron, feeling warmth trickle through his chest even though most of his customers are generous with their compliments and there’s nothing particularly special about this one. 

“Wait ‘til you’ve tried the madeleines.”

“Are you the owner?”

“Oh, no, I just work the register. Arthur’s in the back. I can get him if you want?”

“There’s no need. It’s unbelievable I’m the only customer here. Oh, god—oh, yes, the madeleines are truly sublime,” is said through another groan, and, Jesus, it sounds fucking pornographic out there. Arthur thinks maybe he should plug his ears as he rolls out the pâte sucrée for the chocolate tarts with so much gusto he tears it and has to start over.

“You know what this place needs? A bit more color.” This time Arthur frowns, hands slowing. “And warmer lighting. It’d feel cozier and more cheerful, don’t you think? As it stands, it’s a little cold and bare. Hmm, and if you just put a lovely little window display there in place of all that white space, you’d draw the proper amount of attention.”

And then Arthur’s had enough. Most of the time he gets pleasant customers. Every so often he encounters a few obnoxious ones who get greedy with the samples or bitch about the prices. But he’s never had someone talking like he doesn’t know how to run his own goddamn business, like he needs to consult some arrogant, presumptuous, mannerless _asshole_ who can’t even speak first-grade French.

He stalks out of the kitchen, jaw clenching, nostrils flaring, and his descending wrath is momentarily, just momentarily disrupted by the sight in front of him. Because he’s pissed off but he’s not _blind_ , and the asshole in question is, as it turns out, an irritatingly attractive asshole. Ridiculously blue eyes, gorgeous face, obscenely full lips, and, Jesus, there are tattoos, peeking out from his short sleeves and his neckline. But Arthur doesn’t let himself be sidetracked. Arthur has a purpose.

“ _Please tell our customer that while his business is appreciated, he can kindly go fuck himself, and if I wanted suggestions on how to run my bakery, I would’ve put out a fucking suggestions box_ ,” he says to Ariadne in rapid-fire French, arms crossed over his chest.

She blinks at him twice, face perfectly composed, before turning and _smiling_. _Apologetically_.

“I’m sorry, Mister—”

“Eames, just call me Eames.” Arthur glances at him and he’s looking at Arthur, a little bemused, eyes the color of fucking _cornflowers_ , and Arthur thinks, viciously, that of course his name is Eames, because it’s pretentious as fuck.

“Okay, Eames. Something’s happened in the kitchen and Arthur’s a little—distraught. Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll ring you up later?” 

This is what happens when he listens to Mal and hires someone he respects. He stalks back into the kitchen without another glance at Eames or his cornflower eyes.

“Of course, yea, I’ve taken up too much of your time already.”

Ariadne follows Arthur into the back, nudging the swinging door shut.

“He was just trying to be helpful,” she offers lamely.

Arthur pinches the edges of his tart shells with ruthless efficiency. “I don’t need my customers to be _helpful_. If they like what I’m selling, then fantastic. If they don’t, then they’re perfectly free to go somewhere else. Bakeries are a dime a dozen in Paris. If he wants _cozier_ and _more cheerful_ , I’m sure he won’t have to drag his ass too far to find it.”

It doesn’t matter that he’s gotten the same advice from Mal. She’s a friend. She’s that friend whose honesty sometimes comes at him like a kick in the teeth but doesn’t ever make him doubt that she’s on his side.

“Okay, fine, maybe he overstepped,” Ariadne allows, probably because she knows it’ll be fruitless to argue, “but have you _seen_ him? He’s so gorgeous it hurts me physically to look at him. And he sounds like he just walked out of _Downton Abbey_. I mean, how is he even _real_. I don’t care if he’s mortally offended you, I will murder you if you don’t go back out there and talk to him.”

“I will do no such thing,” Arthur says, plainly irritated with where the conversation is going. “Stop shirking your responsibilities and go do what I actually pay you to do.”

She lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. But he was checking you out. Don’t blame me when you’ve realized you let the perfect opportunity slip through your fingers.”

He doesn’t deign to respond and, after she leaves in an exaggerated huff, moves onto a fresh batch of madeleines, filling each scallop shell without dripping or overpouring so they’re all the same size when he pops them out at the end, and this, he thinks, is true perfection.

*

“Guess who’s baaack.”

Arthur’s dumping two pounds of evenly portioned butter into his saucepan when Ariadne floats into the kitchen, trilling her delight. 

“Who?” 

“ _Eames_.”

He lights the burner and waits calmly for the pan to heat. Three times a day he browns the butter for the madeleines, and it never fails to shift him into a quiet, comforting headspace. It’s his way of meditating, of finding some perspective when the stress of needing to make and keep everything perfect bears down on his shoulders until he can barely stand upright. Browning butter was how he got through his last year of business school and graduated with the offer of a corner office and a six-figure salary.

“Do you plan on getting to a point sometime in the next two hours?” He smiles as the butter starts to bubble and foam.

“Oh, don’t play dumb. _Eames_ , Arthur. The incredibly hot guy who’s totally into you and was, by some miracle, not scared off by your behavior yesterday is now back and sitting out there moaning over your croissants. _Go to him_.”

“Good for him,” Arthur says, trying to stay Zen. “I’m busy.”

“There are more important things in life than browning butter, _god_ , you suck,” Ariadne says, throwing her hands in the air then turning to leave. “I need coffee. I’m getting some coffee.”

He finishes up, squinting at the color and deciding it’s satisfactory, before cleaning up and pushing through the door to check the front for customers.

Eames is sitting at the only table Arthur’s set up in the corner, flipping through some files and getting flakes of croissant over them, wearing a suit that no doubt cost upwards of two thousand dollars. Arthur hadn’t pegged him as the corporate type. And then he feels a flash of irritation because his mind’s being a fucking traitor, making it sound like he’s curious, like he wants to _get to know_ Eames when, in fact, he couldn’t care less.

“Hello there.” 

Arthur finds Eames staring, corners of his mouth turned up obligingly, eyes a little more gray than blue today, matching his tie that’s already a little loose, looking so out of place in Arthur’s bakery that Arthur feels disoriented for a second before he gives himself a hard mental slap.

“ _Do you speak English_?” Eames attempts, and, much like the first time, it sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

“No,” Arthur says without really thinking it through, maybe because he can still remember what Eames said yesterday, word for word, and it still stings, and he’s sitting there in his tailored suit, looking so fucking put together, and goddamn it, Arthur _hates_ him a little.

Eames watches him for another minute before glancing down at his files, then back up again, looking almost regretful. Arthur busies himself with wiping down the counter and rearranging the pastries, wondering, suddenly, if this was Ariadne’s plan all along because it doesn’t take this fucking long to go down the street for coffee.

“That’s a shame. If only I’d paid more attention to my French lessons. Then I’d tell you that the only thing I looked forward to this morning was coming back here to eat one of your croissants. I could wax poetic about your croissants.”

Arthur doesn’t look at Eames, knowing if he does he might already be tempted to give himself away. So he keeps cleaning and organizing, even though there’s nothing more to clean or organize, trying to figure out what Eames’s _deal_ is and why he ever chose to walk into this bakery out of all the fucking bakeries in this city.

Then Eames’s cell rings and when Eames answers it, Arthur allows himself a glance, at the sudden hunch in Eames’s shoulders, the tension in his hand as he sticks it in his hair.

“Fuck, I hate Mondays,” he says into the phone, voice tighter and harder than it was twenty seconds ago. “I know, not your fault, love, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He hangs up, gathering his stuff haphazardly, giving Arthur one more look, accompanied by a small, apologetic smile, before slipping out the door. 

When Ariadne walks in a minute later, Arthur’s standing at the counter, frowning because he’s still thinking about Eames and his confession about Arthur’s croissants and the way his body caved in a little at the phone call, making Arthur feel like he’d been intruding on something he had no right to witness.

“What happened? He left already? _Did you scare him away_?” She walks to the table and picks up a piece of paper Eames must’ve left in his haste to leave. “Oh my god.”

Arthur opens his mouth to tell her to stop being so fucking dramatic, he doesn’t _scare off_ his customers, when she walks over and drops the paper down in front of him.

It’s a sketch. More accurately, it’s a sketch of Arthur. It’s a sketch of Arthur leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, pencil strokes broad and choppy but unhesitating, like Eames took one look at him and committed all his lines to memory. 

He should be trying to decide if it’s flattering or creepy as hell. Instead, he’s thinking, absurdly, that he should save it, on the top shelf of the pantry under his extra madeleine pans, just in case Eames comes back for it, because it’s actually kind of remarkable.

“He’s totally in love with you,” Ariadne says matter-of-factly, then takes a delicate sip of her coffee.

For a moment he says nothing, knowing that most of the time she says these absurd, logic-defying things just to get a rise out of him, to shake him up a little because apparently he’s too unshakeable for his own damn good.

“If he weren’t so hot, you’d be calling him a psychopath.”

“A- _ha_!” she suddenly yells, jabbing an incriminating finger at him. “So you think he’s hot!”

Arthur rolls his eyes like he’s not at this very moment thinking about the ink curving across Eames’s bicep. 

“So what? Doesn’t mean he’s not a complete dick. Either way, he probably won’t come back.”

He walks off to the kitchen, making a point of ignoring Ariadne’s suspicious stare and leaving the sketch exactly where it is.

*

A week passes and Eames doesn’t come back. By the following Saturday Arthur’s forgotten all about him. Or at least he’s doing a pretty damn good job of pretending he has, mostly because he’s busy arriving at the grating conclusion that not hiring more help is quickly becoming one of his stupider ideas.

He’s just closed for the day and ordered Ariadne to go home to finish her architecture assignments, buy groceries, take care of her _life_ ; he might still be on the brink of crashing and burning but he’ll be damned if he takes her along with him. Mal, his saving grace, is sitting at the corner table, sipping the espresso he made her with the machine he dragged across the Atlantic, because for all Paris’s gastronomic delights, its coffee is shit.

“I’m starting to hate Saturdays.” He slumps into the chair across from her and pinches the bridge of his nose, thinking about the expense reports he still has to take care of. “Isn’t Saturday supposed to be the most enjoyable day of the week? I can’t even remember.”

“You’d be wasting your life if you only did what you were supposed to do,” Mal says, smiling, and it would sound like bullshit coming from anyone other than her. “Anyway, you brought this on yourself. So hire more help or suck it up.”

He lets his hand fall into his lap. “It’s disturbing how successful Dom’s been at turning you into an obnoxious American and how epically you’ve failed at making him French.”

“He drinks wine now,” she says with feeling.

“You’ve been married for _three years_.”

“He’s incredibly stubborn. It’s shocking how well the two of you get along,” she says in all seriousness while her eyes sparkle.

“He’s nicer to me—” A sharp rap on the door cuts him off. “Damn it, I must’ve forgotten to flip the sign.”

“I’ll take care of it, _mon chèr_ , you’ve been on your feet all day.”

She walks over to the door, dispersing the scent of jasmine that makes him sink lower into his chair and close his eyes, letting himself be cared for and comforted for just a moment.

“ _I’m sorry,_ Bec Sucré _is closed for the day_.”

“The sign says three, and it’s only 2:45.” Arthur tenses. He can pretend all he wants but he’d recognize that voice anywhere. “Please, I came all the way across the city just to get a few madeleines. Actually, if you let me in, I’ll buy everything you have left.”

“Everything?” Mal’s resolve is crumbling and Arthur really just wants to run over, slam the door, and draw the blinds. But it would be rude and completely insane, not to mention Mal would harass him for an explanation he doesn’t have. _And isn’t that interesting_ , his brain supplies unhelpfully. 

“Everything. And you can charge me double.”

“Deal.”

The door jangles as Mal opens it wider and Arthur drags his hands down his face before standing up and turning around, realizing he’s still wearing his apron and he probably has flour everywhere and something smeared on his face, he always does, and then he tells himself to _get a fucking grip_.

Eames is in charcoal slacks and a crisp blue shirt rolled up impatiently to the elbows, but it’s the tie that makes Arthur blink and stare a little. It’s dotted with what looks like dice and poker chips, and he confirms it as Eames walks closer. It’s an unbelievably hideous _casino-themed_ novelty tie, flagrantly breaking the rules set down by the rest of Eames’s attire, and Arthur imagines that’s the point.

“ _Good afternoon_ ,” Eames says in his terrible French when he sees Arthur, smile so goddamn bright Arthur almost wants to look away.

He settles on a polite nod. “ _What can I get you_?”

“ _Everything_ ,” Eames says, true to his word, and Arthur just raises his eyebrows before setting out to pack up three croissants, eight madeleines, five macaroons, two chocolate tarts, three mini brioches, and four palmiers. Mal watches from her seat, sipping her espresso, eyes narrowed a little like she knows something’s up and she’ll get to the bottom of it whether Arthur likes it or not. Which he never, ever does.

Eames fidgets with his hands on the counter as Arthur closes the lids on the boxes.

“ _I’ve been thinking about your pastries all week._ ”

Arthur’s hands still, for just long enough to let Eames know that he’s listening. That for all Eames’s heedless butchering of the French language, Arthur understands.

“ _I’ve never had a sweet tooth, but something about your pastries makes me happy. I find myself smiling when I eat them, and maybe it’s because I can taste how much you love what you do._ ”

It’s a rush of words, one stumbling over the next, rehearsed diligently but not really learned, not enough for him to overcome the life-long habit of sounding perfectly English. And Arthur’s heart is pounding like crazy, nearly _aching_ from it. Because Eames came back a week later to make sure that Arthur understood him this time. Because every word he said perfectly vindicates everything Arthur’s given up to get here. Because when he said it, he sounded mostly grateful but just a little bit hopeless.

Arthur swallows, finally looking Eames in the eyes, hands clutching the pastry box like it’ll remind him to have some common sense. This is the real world after all and what kind of person goes around admitting things like that to a complete stranger.

So he just says, “ _Thank you_ ,” then offers a small smile, suddenly feeling guilty for lying, and the truth sits on his tongue, pressed against his teeth, until Eames leaves.

*

Unsurprisingly, Ariadne finds out about the whole thing by the next morning. Arthur learned quickly that while she and Mal disagree about almost everything, they’re fucking co-conspirators where he’s concerned.

“You are literally the most impossible human being I’ve ever known,” she declares after wringing the story out of him, probably so she can compare notes with Mal later. “Why can’t you talk to him like a normal person? He complimented you. He sketched you. _He learned French for you_. Which, by the way, also makes you a _terrible_ human being. What even possessed you to pretend you don’t speak a word of English?”

He rubs at his temple as he double checks the pantry for items he needs restocked, deciding that if he ends up having to incur extra delivery expenses because Ariadne’s unreasonably long and unreasonably loud harangue makes him forget something, he won’t feel a shred of remorse taking it out of her paycheck.

“Are you done now?”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “No, but I’ll allow you the next few minutes to defend yourself.”

“I don’t know what possessed me, all right?” he snaps, with more bite than he intended, but, really, he just wishes Eames never walked into his bakery, never came back and made Arthur think that maybe he’s not an asshole after all, because he’s done nothing but disrupt the status quo. Arthur was _happy_ with the status quo. “Will you just drop it? If I wanted to be lectured on my shitty life decisions, I’d call my mom.”

She looks at him for a moment, eyes softening with the sympathy that, frankly, he doesn’t deserve.

Then she says evenly, “Time to open up shop,” before walking out.

He drops his head in his hands, then drags them through his hair before straightening to get his shit together. Business on Sundays is less concentrated than the rest of the week, more of a lazy ebb and flow, so he takes advantage of the lulls to prep dough and brown butter for the week, working himself down from his peaking anxiety levels to something more manageable. He indulges in the routine like he indulges in the pumpkin cocottes and fleur-de-lis Bundt pans he’ll probably never use. But it’s not just any routine. It’s not the routine that used to make him want to stab his eyeballs out, thinking if he never heard the words _all-hands meeting_ again then it would be too soon. It’s a routine that lets him set his own boundaries, get his hands dirty, and surrounds him with textures and smells that create a richer, more beautiful world that some people only dream about.

When he finally takes a break around 11, Eames is already sitting at the table with a croissant and preserves, wearing possibly the most ghastly chevron-patterned shirt he’s ever had the misfortune of laying his eyes on, with short sleeves and a _collar_. And yet, because the world outside Arthur’s kitchen is cruel and unjust, Eames still manages to be stupidly, infuriatingly attractive.

Arthur sidles over to the counter and Ariadne glances at him, clearly making a concerted effort to be casual about the whole thing, and he smiles a little. Eames is lounging in his chair, legs splayed insolently, sketching something, shifting every so often but pencil never ceasing, not when he reaches for his croissant or rubs the back of his neck, like his entire world’s narrowed down to what’s front of him and everything else is just white noise.

The bells chime. Arthur turns to the door and it’s Dom. Dom, who drops by the bakery when Mal stays at home with Philippa and picks up their weekly box of madeleines. Dom, whose intensity can be a little off-putting but who’s mostly well-meaning, surprisingly funny, entirely dedicated to Mal, and probably completely oblivious because he doesn’t approve of meddling in other people’s lives—something he and Arthur have repeatedly bonded over—so Mal practices moderation at home.

Eames is looking at him now, the weight of his eyes heavy and warm, and for a second he considers bolting for the kitchen doors and hiding until Dom leaves. Then he remembers he’s an _adult_ for Christ’s sake and he might as well own up; he’s dragged it out for long enough.

Dom throws Eames a curious glance before turning to Arthur and Ariadne, and running a hand through his hair—silky, blond, movie star hair that Arthur secretly envies because it clearly doesn’t need to be beaten into submission every morning with half a jar of pomade.

“Hey guys, double the order today,” he says, pulling out his wallet. “I’m heading to the office to tell Saito the zoning permits aren’t going through for the Fischer project and he’s gonna tear me a new one if I don’t soften him up first. He’s crazy about your madeleines.”

Arthur makes sure his eyes don’t stray to Eames when he replies, “I got a little overzealous with the madeleines this morning so you can have triple if you want.”

“You’re a life saver,” Dom says, shoulders sagging a little, the bruising under his eyes obvious now that Arthur’s paying attention. “And can you add a couple chocolate tarts? Mal’s had to put up with my late hours for a week now and she’s starting to get a little passive-aggressive.”

Which, Arthur knows, is almost more terrifying than Mal being openly furious, so he says, sympathetically, “I’m sure she understands you don’t have much of a choice. But chocolate wouldn’t hurt.”

“Definitely the key to a woman’s heart,” Ariadne adds decisively as she hands over the pastry box.

Only when Dom leaves does Arthur sneak a glance at Eames, who’s back to his sketching, ever so calmly, with only crumbs left on his plate, and now Arthur really does feel like a terrible human being, which is completely crazy because he doesn’t know Eames and he certainly doesn’t _owe_ him anything, so what if he told a little white albeit preposterous lie. But he does, undeniably, feel terrible and Ariadne’s jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow, so he thinks he can at least ask Eames if he wants another croissant. He’s got nothing to lose.

The door chimes again as he’s walking over and he leaves it to Ariadne, who’s way better than him at talking up his pastries anyway.

“Can I get you something else?” He’d planned to say it with a little more conviction but he’s staring at Eames’s sketch and having a little trouble with words because it’s another one of him, this time sitting at this very table, leaning forward on his forearms like he’s talking to someone sitting across from him, except the table’s cut in half and it’s just him, looking incredibly intent and _alive_ in shades of black and white.

“I hope you don’t mind, my hand has a life of its own sometimes. It’s rather incorrigible that way but it does find the loveliest subjects.”

Eames is smiling up at Arthur like he’s just shared a little-known secret and he trusts Arthur to keep it safe, and Arthur’s having trouble breathing now because he thinks Eames called him _lovely_ , which should’ve sound like a line but it really, really didn’t. So he decides that maybe Eames is just a spectacularly good actor, or he’s become spectacularly bad at detecting bullshit.

“I—no, I don’t mind, I guess. It’s really—good,” he finishes lamely.

Eames’s smile dims a little and Arthur feels less caught, closer to his equilibrium.

“It’s only a hobby. Keeps me from going mad,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate. “And no, thank you, nothing more for me, I’d best be off. Back to the real world.”

His thinly-veiled regret makes Arthur look away as he takes the empty plate, wondering why Eames keeps _doing_ that, letting Arthur see glimpses of him that feel too intimate, too goddamn real when Arthur doesn’t know him at all. There are _rules_ for this kind of thing, an order that Eames clearly has no qualms about upsetting. It makes Arthur all kinds of anxious.

Just as he turns to leave, Eames says, “I suspected all along, you know. Although you played the part quite convincingly.”

Fuck. He’d forgotten all about that, what with Eames’s smiles and words and existence throwing him off balance. He risks a glance and Eames is watching him, equal parts amused and curious, but not asking _why_ , and somehow he feels shittier for it.

“The croissants are fresh out of the oven every half hour between seven and nine during the week. Nothing compares.” 

He’s never been good with apologies but Eames is smiling again, _beaming_ at him and, Jesus, the radiance of it could light up an entire city block, so, really, who could blame him for smiling back, just a little.

*

And just like that, Eames starts showing up every morning at seven like clockwork. Sometimes he gets the croissants to go and sometimes he stays for a while, looking over files or frowning at his laptop. By Thursday, Arthur’s added another table next to the one Eames has unofficially claimed, even though it makes him feel, uneasily, like he’s running a café, which he absolutely is not. He just prefers to head off complaints and claims of favoritism, which isn’t to say these hypothetical claims would _at all_ be true.

Or—maybe just tiny bit true, if making espresso for Eames could be construed as favoritism, which, to be fair, only became a thing after Eames had come in on Wednesday looking fucking terrible, eyes bruised and bloodshot, mouth hard, and every muscle in his body tensed like he was itching for a fight. It took a triple shot to get him loose enough that Arthur didn’t feel worked up just looking at him. He’d moaned—in that way Arthur remembers—with pure rapture at the first sip, mumbling something about Arthur’s hands and _magical_ before getting down to his day’s work. Arthur had ducked back into the kitchen and pretended he didn’t hear, but made sure Ariadne brought him his espresso the next morning, a darker roast that elicited a slightly less startling but equally appreciative noise.

Saturday he doesn’t come at all. Arthur only notices because he glances once or twice at the two tables in the corner and tells himself he’s definitively not bothered by the sight of someone other than Eames in his expensive suit and occasionally appalling tie. If Ariadne notices he’s frowning more than usual, she tactfully keeps it to herself. 

On Sunday Eames is back, considerably later than usual but Arthur makes him espresso anyway after bringing Mal her usual. He apparently reserves weekends for hideous shirts because he’s wearing another short-sleeved monstrosity, goddamn _paisley_ this time, and Arthur’s actually never seen anything so visually offensive in his life on someone who’s so—not. The contradiction drives him a little crazy.

“So, Eames, have you just moved into the neighborhood?” Mal asks after she’s settled in and draped a thin shawl over the back of her chair, raising her cup to her lips.

Eames is sketching again, something he also seems to reserve for weekends, and Arthur can’t help thinking there are two versions of Eames with minimal overlap. One who frequents Arthur’s bakery on weekdays and mostly keeps to himself, hunched and tired, tone brusque when he gets a phone call. Then there’s the other version who walks in on weekends with a cluttered sketchbook, mouth quick to smile, body languid and easy. Arthur can’t quite reconcile the two and he admits, ever so discreetly to himself, that it’s bewildering and _compelling_ , in a way he’s entirely unaccustomed to.

“Ah, sadly no. It’s a delightful thought, having this bakery to wake up to indefinitely,” Eames says, eyes searching for Arthur and finding him wiping down the counter without much conviction. “I’m in Paris for business. We expected to wrap up in two weeks’ time, but we’ve hit some—roadblocks. It’s been god awful but Arthur’s croissants have given me something to live for.”

He grins at Mal, who looks positively delighted, which can only mean terrible, agonizing consequences for Arthur.

“All the shameless flattery won’t help you get on my good side or anything. Just so you know,” he says, to set the record straight.

“Arthur’s showered hourly with compliments,” Mal informs Eames.

“As he should be,” Eames says without missing a beat, eyes sliding to Arthur again, hands absently tearing off a piece of his croissant, studying him so intently he feels, vaguely, like all the oxygen’s being sucked out of the room.

He clears his throat. “What kind of business are you in?”

Eames chews and swallows. “We’re a holding company, actually, based in London. Primarily media and tech, but we’ve been expanding our horizons.”

Arthur freezes as Mal’s cup clatters against the plate, and he assumes they just ran headlong into the same realization.

“Wait. Eames.” Her eyes are comically wide. “As in George Eames? The owner of GAE International?”

“He’s my father, yes.” Eames gives a sharp, perfunctory smile. “Most people say I bear little family resemblance. Makes for slightly awkward family portraits when I look like a weird third cousin everyone vaguely remembers at holiday gatherings.”

So clearly Arthur had been right about those suits. He only has an approximate idea of what Eames’s net worth might be, but it’s unquestionably more than this bakery he’s sitting in, eating his croissant and drinking his espresso like he’s not on his way to inherit the kind of wealth that could finance a sizeable chunk of the third world. Like he could do ordinary if he was given the chance.

“What’s weird is you making it sound like family portraits are still a thing,” Arthur says, but most definitely not in a way that might suggest he’s reluctantly charmed by any of it.

“It is if your father owns an estate with its own hedge maze and aviary. We do Christmas cards, too. The demand is overwhelming but I can slip your name onto the VIP list if you’re interested,” Eames offers, smile widening. Arthur’s mouth twitches, but only because it’s so damn preposterous. 

“Since you seem so devoted to Arthur’s croissants, you might be interested to know that he’s looking for investors,” Mal says casually.

It catches Arthur off guard for a second, because for all her meddling she’s actually never been this presumptuous. And then he’s just feels furious. _Betrayed_.

“ _Mal_ ,” he warns, skirting the edge of threatening, before clenching his jaw to keep from saying something he might regret. The thing is, if he’s really honest with himself, it’s the way it comes off so goddamn opportunistic that he can’t swallow down.

“No, it’s quite all right,” Eames says reasonably. “Just give me the numbers and I’ll see what I can do. There’s unlimited potential here. It would be a bloody shame to see that untapped because you have limited capital.”

Arthur crushes the towel in his hand, feeling like he’s being fucking waylaid from all directions now, because _Eames_ , damn it all to hell. Eames makes it sound so sensible and easy when Arthur hasn’t even given him a pitch, or his last name for Christ’s sake. Eames’s unreserved willingness makes the whole thing even harder to swallow because he probably hasn’t had to work for one goddamn thing in his life and Arthur isn’t a fucking _charity case_.

“If you two are done deciding what’s best for my bakery, I need to get back to work,” he says, and summarily stalks back into the kitchen.

When he comes out a half hour later to see to the last few customers of the day, breathing a little easier, Eames is gone and Mal’s reading one of her design magazines, elbow propped on the table and chin in one hand.

“ _See you in a week, Clémence_ ,” he says to one of his favorites, a petite middle-aged widow who pens children’s books for a living with the imagination of a six-year-old. 

When she leaves, Mal turns to him.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up,” she says, eyes soft and apologetic and _knowing_. “I don’t want to see you holding yourself back, that’s all.”

He walks around and sits down across from her, toying with her empty coffee cup.

“I know,” he says, and he does. He also knows he doesn’t make things easy and she always puts up with it beautifully, with inexhaustible patience. “I fucked up a really good opportunity, didn’t I?”

“Maybe,” Mal says tentatively, and that’s when it kind of hits him, that he was actually a complete _asshole_ and Eames has no reason to ever come back again with his sketches and his excessive flattery that somehow absolutely gets him on Arthur’s good side, probably because it always sounds so painfully sincere, like he’s hoping, secretly or not, to sweep Arthur off his goddamn feet. The irony of it all rounds out the terrible taste in his mouth.

“Fuck,” he says, and it’s really the best way to sum it up. “Did he—say anything before he left?”

There’s really no use in asking, but call it morbid curiosity.

Mal looks at him shrewdly. “He said, and I quote, ‘he’s a stubborn bugger, isn’t he? I’m afraid I have to cut our chat short, but it was utterly charming to meet you’.”

Arthur stares a little stupidly. “That’s it? Did he slam the door on his way out?”

“Don’t be an idiot, he was perfectly pleasant.”

He frowns, a little disturbed by Eames’s apparent inclination to do the exact opposite of what Arthur expects.

“Huh.”

Mal sighs. “It’s time to start giving him a little credit, hmm?”

Arthur really hates it when she proves him wrong.

*

When Eames comes back Monday morning, it’s like Sunday never happened. Arthur makes him espresso—the medium roast, because judging by his ridiculous noises of approval, he seems to enjoy that one best—and he plugs away at his computer, murmuring his heartfelt gratitude when Arthur brings him a second croissant, fresh out of the oven a half hour later.

Eight o’clock comes and goes, then nine, and Eames is still there with his eyes glued to the screen, elbow propped on the table and hand curled against his mouth. His shoulders are tensed up again, posture appalling, and Arthur thinks he might as well do something do something about it.

“They say sitting for more than half an hour at a time is terrible for your health.”

It takes a second for Eames to look up at him, blinking owlishly. 

“I should probably be more afraid of all the butter you’re feeding me,” he says, smiling, and then looks back at the screen. “Bloody hell, it’s already half past nine?”

He drops his face into his hands and rubs at his eyes.

“Is it Monday? Oh god, it’s Monday. The cruelest, most interminable day of the week.”

Arthur takes a seat, slanting his legs so their knees don’t knock together under the small table.

“I used to say that when I still worked in accounting,” he says, even though up until this very moment he’s actively avoided mentioning the part of his life that still gets under his skin in more ways than he cares to admit. “Mondays felt like a black gaping abyss of despair. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, too, come to think of it.

Eames lets his hands drop, raising his eyebrows. “You were an _accountant_?”

His tone makes Arthur frown. “What? You think because I started a bakery that I was a high school dropout or something?”

“I—no, I didn’t really think about it at all,” he says, a little bewildered. “So you hated your job. And you quit, just like that?”

Arthur shrugs, fiddling with the unused napkin on the table, thinking about the word _hate_ and how brief and uncomplicated it sounds even though it never is, brief or uncomplicated.

“I mean, there were a lot of sleepless nights. Too many to keep track of. But yea, essentially.”

Eames leans back in his chair, watching Arthur so damn intently, like it’s a startling revelation he has to work hard to reconcile with the idea of Arthur he’s already formed in his head like one of his sketches.

Arthur shifts in his seat, feeling exposed and wishing he’d just kept his mouth shut because there was no good reason to tell Eames any of it. He didn’t even _ask_ , for fuck’s sake, and Arthur’s gone and told him things he hasn’t really had the heart to confess to anyone else, not even family.

“I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to be an artist,” Eames finally says, and it’s Arthur’s turn to feel a little thrown, disarmed by an admission that’s clearly more significant than Eames is letting on. For one, he’s the heir to a goddamn _empire_.

And this time when Arthur looks at Eames, he can’t believe how he didn’t figure it out before, it’s so stunning and obvious that it _hurts_ a little. The two versions of Eames, one he’s expected to be and the other he dreams of being, something he thinks is so unattainable that, in those hours, he dreams unapologetically.

“Why don’t you?” Arthur asks.

Eames lets out a short laugh. “Obligations? Expectations? Some of us live in the real world, Arthur.”

The words come at him quick like a resounding slap in the face, and Eames suddenly looks horrified.

“Bugger, I didn’t—”

“Fuck you.” His head is ringing and it fucking _stings_ , maybe because some naïve, stupidly eager part of him figured they were on the same side. “At least I’m not wasting my life being a completely miserable asshole, I’m _living_ it. So I’ll let you get back to the real world, Mr. Eames. Let me know how that works out for you.”

He stands and leaves, knocking his thighs against the table, ignoring the look Ariadne throws him as he pushes the door open to the kitchen. He presses his palms against the counter and breathes steadily through his nose, settling for a moment into that blank space in his head where nothing can touch him.

Then his cell phone buzzes in his pocket, and, fuck, he completely forgot he was supposed to call home yesterday.

“Hi, mom, sorry, I—”

“Oh, thank god nothing terrible’s happened.” Her voice comes through with a little static, which means she’s probably in the basement trying to cure her insomnia with one of those shitty Lifetime movies.

He sighs. “No, I’m fine. You need to stop imagining worst-case scenarios before you give yourself a coronary.”

“Well, I can’t know if you don’t _call_ , Arthur. I wish you’d move closer to home, you’re so far away. It’s not like I can fly across an ocean on a moment’s notice to check up on you.”

He pinches the area between his eyes with two fingers, trying to keep his residual anger from working its way back up his chest.

“I was thinking about taking a week off next month to come see you guys. Take care of whatever you need done around the house. You’re not still letting dad do any of that stuff, are you?”

The TV starts blaring in the background.

“Just a few things here and there,” she says distractedly. “I was thinking next time you’re back, you could reconnect with your old colleagues, see if they’re still at the firm. Maybe you’ll realize you miss it.”

He says nothing for a moment because he has a pretty good idea of what this is about. She’s gone from denial to something worse, to the realization that he intends to stick to his guns, and the fear that she’s powerless to change his mind. That she could lose her son forever to a life she never wanted for him.

And it breaks his fucking heart. 

“I’ll let you know when I book the tickets, mom,” he says evenly. “I need to get back to work.”

When he hangs up, he sets his phone on the counter and rests on his forearms, squeezing his eyes shut, suddenly feeling breathless and claustrophobic, chest tightening until he’s gasping a little. He thinks he has to get the hell out of here, out of these walls pressing in on all sides, and he walks, _runs_ out of the kitchen and straight through the bakery. Then he’s outside sucking in heaving breaths, doubled over with his hands on his knees, body shaking, and he can’t fucking _control_ it.

“Arthur, bloody hell, _Arthur_ ,” he hears vaguely before feeling a hand frame his face, another on his back, straightening him up, even though he can’t quite feel his feet on the ground and his head is spinning now from all the oxygen.

It’s Eames, he thinks stupidly, eyes so fucking beautiful, hands so _warm_ and, goddamn it, it’s all too much. He drops his head onto Eames’s shoulder and breathes and breathes while Eames rubs soothing circles across his back, murmuring nonsense that trickles pleasantly between the fragments of his awareness. 

They stand there until his chest loosens and breathing slows, until he thinks he can stand on his own without falling to pieces, and then he takes a step back, staring at the perfect half Windsor at Eames’s throat before looking up.

Eames is frowning a little, eyes sharp and searching like he’s trying to check Arthur for cracks and breaks. 

“You gave me quite a scare,” he says, mouth pulling up helplessly at the corners. 

Arthur takes another step back, thinking Eames looking at him like that might send him into another panic attack.

“I was just—today’s been—” he starts and stops, then says, “Thanks. You didn’t have to—”

He trails off, stifling a groan because, Jesus, can he possibly sound like a bigger idiot. He’ll have to remember to record today as one of the Worst Fucking Mondays of All Time.

“It was the least I could do to make up for being a condescending twat earlier. I’m sorry,” Eames says, sliding his hands into his pockets and looking down at his feet. “For what it’s worth, I envy you. For going after what you want, for not letting anyone else run your life, for doing what you love and being brilliant at it. But then, that makes it all sound so bloody simple, and it never is, is it?”

The admission sinks heavily into the space between them and Arthur feels the weight of it shift them until they’re no longer on opposing sides. Until, maybe, they’re just about meeting in the middle.

“No, it never is.”

There’s a moment of silence, of stillness, before Eames fishes out a pack of cigarettes and offers one to Arthur. He’s really been meaning to kick the habit all together, but his body’s still buzzing a little, with lingering anxiety and with something else entirely, so he takes one, thinking there’s no day like tomorrow to start weeding out his vices.

He raises it to his mouth and leans over so Eames can light it, one hand cupped around the flame, then takes a long, slow drag, closing his eyes as he blows out the smoke, feeling his chest loosen that one last inch. 

He glances at Eames, who’s fiddling with the top of the packet distractedly, shoulders still tense as hell, like it’s their natural state, and he smiles a little because it’s starting to feel familiar.

“Here,” he says, offering his smoke, “you look like you need it just as much as I do.”

Eames stares at him, a little caught off guard, before taking it, and Arthur swallows hard as Eames brings it to his lips and _sucks_ , because, Jesus Christ, that’s the kind of sight that’ll haunt him at night. 

He keeps his eyes on Eames as he takes back the cigarette, watching the smoke obscure Eames’s face for just a moment before dissipating, then watching Eames watch him when he takes another indulgent drag, like Eames is wondering if Arthur can taste him in his mouth. 

God, he is so fucked.

*

When Arthur brings Eames his usual the next morning, his laptop is on the table but closed, and he’s sketching. Which makes Arthur’s eyebrows shoot up because it’s a _Tuesday_ , and while Eames still looks haggard and stretched thin, something else peeks through, a lovely, contented something that makes Arthur inexplicably crave the weekend. It’s been months since the last time that distinction made any difference.

“You never draw on weekdays,” he says before he can stop himself, like he’s _intimately familiar_ with Eames’s habits, and, goddamn it, why is there no undo button for life.

Eames looks up at him, looking a little startled and then way too pleased.

“I’m trying my hand at not being a completely miserable arsehole,” he explains, smiling widely, and somehow when he says it, it just sounds stupidly endearing, which had not been what Arthur was going for at all. “And your customers are so delightfully eclectic, so I thought, what the hell, it won’t be the end of the world if I skive off work for one morning, live on the edge a little.”

“I don’t know. Won’t stock prices plummet and capitalism grind to a halt in your absence?” He peeks at Eames’s sketches and wonders how he manages to make black and white look so _colorful_.

“If that will impress you, then yes, absolutely. Oceans will dry, mountains will crumble, the French will outlaw butter and pour perfectly good wine into the streets,” Eames expounds dramatically, eyes dancing, and Arthur realizes, belatedly, that Eames thinks he’s _flirting_ , and that should make him feel all kinds of conflicted. Except, Eames is drawing him in so fucking effortlessly, making him sway and tip over the meticulously laid edges of his world into some place strange and new and terrifyingly wonderful.

So he says, “Now you’re just making me sound easy,” and lets himself smile without reservation, just this once.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, darling,” Eames says, sounding slightly breathless. “But you could applaud the effort. At the very least, tell me if I’m on the right track.”

But Arthur’s not paying attention. Arthur’s stuck on that one word, that _darling_ , with the air knocked out of his lungs because it’s kind of unbearable how easily it slipped off Eames’s tongue, how it could be something Eames throws around all the time at people he forgets about sooner or later, or something he _means_ , which is infinitely, immeasurably more terrifying.

“Arthur, we’re running low on croissants!”

He blinks, feeling a little out of his fucking mind. “Your coffee’s getting cold,” he tells Eames stupidly, and then walks away.

For an hour he bakes—which is absolutely not a euphemism for _hiding in the kitchen_ —letting the routine of flouring, rolling, and cutting lull him into a sense of security, as entirely false as it may be. When he finally sticks his head out to check on—things—Ariadne’s hunched over a textbook and Eames is still there, still sketching, because apparently he wasn’t kidding about playing hooky.

This time Arthur brings him a couple madeleines and tea. Arthur never brings him madeleines and tea, but then, Arthur’s also never seen Eames sketch on a Tuesday. When he sets them down on the table, Eames blinks at this new development, though not with any sort of displeasure. 

“You’ve made me tea. Are you secretly British? If so, I’ve tragically underestimated your powers of deception.”

Arthur sits down, mouth twitching because he kind of deserved that one.

“No, it goes well with the madeleines. In fact, after this you might forget all about the croissants,” he says to build the anticipation, tipping his chair back until he’s resting on its back legs and the tips of his shoes.

Eames looks scandalized. “ _Never_. Nothing will extinguish the bright and glorious torch I carry for your croissants.” Then he eyes the tea. “But I suppose I can put your theory to the test.”

Arthur watches him take one of the little cakes and dunk it into his tea before taking a bite, making a deep, throaty sound of pleasure that sends tremors down the length of Arthur’s spine, and, fuck. His balance slips a little and he quickly steadies himself with a hand gripped around the edge of the table.

Eames follows it up with a slow sip of his tea, eyes fixed on Arthur.

“This feels distinctly Proustian. Which makes me feel more French than I probably deserve.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “You’ve read Proust?”

“No,” Eames admits readily, taking another sip of tea, “but I had my assistant summarize all seven volumes for me before I left for Paris, just in case the dinner conversations veered away from liquidity ratios towards early 20th century French literature.” 

Honestly, Arthur can’t decide which part of that sounds more insane but he really, really can’t help smiling anyway.

“And here I thought you were cultured. I was so very close to being impressed.”

“I live to fight another day,” Eames says, undeterred. “Also if you keep smiling at me like that, I might start thinking I’m doing something right.”

His foot pushes up, just so, against Arthur’s chair, suddenly upsetting his balance so he has no choice but to drop down hard onto the floor.

He glares, he really tries to, but Eames has his chin propped in his hand, knuckles against his mouth, smile so goddamn irrepressible and _young_ that Arthur’s chest hurts, all the way down to his heart, like his spaces are trying to expand even when it’s physically impossible.

Then Eames looks down and picks up his half-eaten madeleine.

“They say sugar and cocaine stimulate the same reward centers in the brain. Suppose that’s why it’s called a sugar high, that indescribable euphoria. The more you have, the more you crave it.” His eyes slide up to Arthur again. “You can tell me if you’re an incurable addict, Arthur, I won’t think any less of you.”

Arthur swallows. He tries to focus, to not want to crawl out of his skin because the whole thing sounds like a metaphor, a fucking terrible one but not so terrible that it—uttered by Eames, _sotto voce_ for fuck’s sake—doesn’t make his sexual frustration go from zero to 60 in under three seconds.

“Honestly, I eat very little of what I bake,” he says as he mentally makes a list of the least sexy things on the planet. “It’s the process I enjoy the most I guess. Taking all those pieces and making them into a whole. Creating something for myself.”

“Owning something from start to finish, no matter if it ends up being a masterpiece or utter shit.”

He blinks at Eames, who smiles quietly instead of loudly this time and sips his tea calmly, like he didn’t just _get_ it on the first try. A small but resonant voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Mal chides him for being so surprised.

“Yea. Yea, that’s exactly it.” Then he pauses, running a finger along an edge of Eames’s sketchbook. He’s never been comfortable with talking about himself. He prefers asking questions to giving answers, figuring it’s a foolproof way to avoid the risk of giving too much away. With Eames—with Eames that risk feels _tantalizing_ , terror mixing with anticipation until it starts becoming sweet, hot adrenaline coaxing him into thoroughly screwing the consequences. 

So he turns the tables, ignoring that small, Mal-like voice that whispers _coward_.

“What about you? Judging by how you look most mornings, you don’t especially enjoy your job.”

Eames drops the madeleine onto the plate and sits back in his chair. Nothing about his demeanor changes but it still makes Arthur twitch. And maybe that’s just it. His observation triggers _nothing_ , like Eames has no problem putting one over on him like he does the rest of the world. 

“Occupational hazard,” Eames says lightly, “I can’t say I enjoy the long hours, but I’d be a fool to complain.”

Arthur wants to call him out on it, because it’s clearly bullshit. Bullshit wrapped in artful diplomacy so it can just about pass for the truth. Instead, he keeps his mouth shut, wondering what it is about Eames, exactly, that keeps making him want to flout his own goddamn rules for virtually everything.

Then, inexplicably and without warning, Eames lets his composure crumble a little, smile fading, jaw working with visible effort, and Arthur twitches again, fisting one hand against his thigh.

“My father worked his entire life to get to where he is, built his empire brick by brick, and it’s being handed to me on a silver platter. What more can I possibly ask for?” He reaches out and pushes his tea cup around in circles. “There’s an endless stream of people telling me what I can accomplish with all my pending wealth. Limitless possibilities, they say. Admittedly most of them are shameless entrepreneurs pandering to my terribly inflated ego,” he cracks a smile and it’s mostly unconvincing, though maybe just a little bit charming, “but they’re right. I could try to change the bloody world and get farther in a day than most people do in a lifetime. I’d be a right ungrateful bastard to complain.”

Arthur says nothing. Arthur waits, because it feels like Eames has kept all this quiet for so long he could hardly breathe for fear it might break loose and wreak havoc, and now he’s fucking finally getting some air into his lungs. Arthur waits because Eames is looking at him like he’s the one keeping them grounded when he can’t really say if he’s falling or flying or sitting still.

“My father was born with that kind of ambition. That’s what my mother used to say, both when she was exceptionally fond and exceptionally fed up. Frankly, she rarely fell anywhere in between. The sicker she got, the more bricks he laid. That was his way of dealing with his grief I suppose, filling in the hole she was leaving.” It’s more of a stream of consciousness now, or maybe floodwaters, threatening to pull Arthur under; he can feel the undercurrents of anger, of longing and loneliness. “She was lovely, like a dream, the one thing he couldn’t hold onto, even with all his wealth and power. When she died, it was the closest he and I had ever been.”

“What would she have wanted for you?” Arthur asks, then cringes a little—he sounds like a therapist for god’s sake—but he figures maybe no one’s ever asked, and maybe it’ll make all the difference in the world.

Eames looks a little startled, and then contemplative, rubbing absently at his lower lip with his thumb.

“She’d want me to be happy. She’d tell me life’s too short to be anything else. But she was also a practical woman, probably why she married my father,” he remarks dryly, curling and uncurling a corner of his sketchbook. “She knew sometimes you need to make sacrifices, that it’s impossible to have everything you want, and the trickiest thing about life that no one ever really warns you about is deciding what you’re willing to give up. Some people make it seem easy but that’s just utter bollocks if you ask me.” Then he looks up at Arthur again, blinking. “Christ, sorry, sometimes I have a hard time shutting up once I get started. I should have a warning label on my forehead.”

He flashes a self-deprecating grin and Arthur smiles faintly in acknowledgement, still trying to digest what he’s said, lay out the haphazard pieces making up the kind of picture worth staring at for hours to figure out the story it’s telling. 

“Just because you’re willing to give it up doesn’t mean you should,” Arthur says, telling himself he’s just playing devil’s advocate.

“Yea, well, I suppose the second trickiest thing about life is living it with no regrets.” Eames rubs at the back of his head with one hand, then lets it drop before saying, as if it’s the first time he’s admitting it to himself, let alone anyone else: “Or maybe—maybe what it really comes down to is not being bloody terrified all the time of fucking it all up.” 

*

Arthur doesn’t usually have music on in the kitchen. The rare instances he does, it’s Tchaikovsky or Brahms, something wordless, turned down low so it’s accompanying, not overwhelming, the sounds of his baking. Ariadne calls it neurotic and he secretly takes it as a compliment. He figures anyone who takes his craft seriously, who wants to elevate it to something worth remembering, is at least a little bit insane. And, really, the silence just sets the stage for true appreciation. Like taking a bite of a madeleine or a rare steak, closing his eyes, and just _relishing_ in the layers of taste and aroma and texture. 

Today, though, he can’t fucking stand the silence. Today he’s already shut his hand in his bathroom door, burned his mouth on coffee, and locked himself out of his apartment, because it kind of feels like all hell’s broken loose in his head and he’s kind of freaking the fuck out. So he decides that, today, he’ll make an exception and no one has to know.

Except, when Ariadne walks in just before seven, he realizes, too little, too late, that he’s lost track of time. 

“Arthur. Arthur, are you listening to _Taylor Swift_.” She looks torn between fleeing in horror and laughing her ass off. Arthur resists the urge to just lie down on the floor, fold his hands over his chest, and die. “I knew it, I _knew_ there was a fifteen-year-old country starlet in you just dying to be set free.”

“If you breathe a single word of this to Mal, or any living human being, I will make you regret it,” he says calmly, switching off the music. “I haven’t thought of how yet, but trust that I will.”

“And by any living human being you mean Eames? Because I’m pretty sure he would find this _bloody adorable_ ,” she says with a shit-eating grin and a sorry British accent, unfazed by his threats.

“Go do—things,” he says, waving her off, frowning inwardly at his sudden inability to use his words.

“So you don’t deny it,” she says in a singsong voice as she walks away, so smug he can still _feel_ it after she disappears around the corner.

He grinds his teeth. He’ll deal with her later. Right now he has bigger problems, problems that catchy pop tunes and a disgusting amount of meringue have, disappointingly, failed to solve. _Eames_ kind of problems that made him toss and turn the entire night, dreams bleeding into nightmares, and then wake up high-strung, exhausted, and already in a foul mood. 

The thing is: Eames _is_ the problem. Eames who’s caused nothing but trouble since he walked into the bakery, upending Arthur’s quiet corner of Paris and making everything fall out of place with complete disregard for whether Arthur welcomed it or not. Which he didn’t. He doesn’t. He doesn’t want to see Eames every day, see Eames and feel, even before they say a word, that he’s being pulled in every goddamn direction, feel _too much_ , period. He doesn’t want Eames, because, the glaring, inconvenient truth of it is, he’s never wanted someone this much in his life. Some _thing_ , maybe, but things are passive, things can’t provoke or wound or betray. People, though, people have a limitless capacity to do all those things. So he doesn’t make himself vulnerable, simple as that, and with Eames, he already feels like he has his back against the wall. 

Which means he shouldn’t be thinking about Eames in his business professional or his weekend casual, being stupidly charming or unbearably sincere. He should be pushing off the wall and running like hell the other way if he still had any sense of self-preservation.

So he dumps the damn meringue—feeling a brief pang of agony because his eggs are organic as shit and free range and expensive—and plans exactly how he’ll go about avoiding Eames starting today, starting now.

Except Eames doesn’t show up. At seven or eight or noon. Which is just unacceptable because Arthur had a _plan_ , a plan he was ready to carry out with conviction, goddamn it.

“Hey, Arthur,” Ariadne says as his irritation peaks, sticking her head in the doorway, “I know you operate on a higher culinary plane than we mere mortals or whatever, but I think something in your oven is burning.”

“Oh, fuck me.” 

When he takes the madeleines out, they’re so burned they’re smoking. He never burns his madeleines. It’s unthinkable. It’s _sacrilegious_. He throws the entire pan into the trash all the while wishing he wasn’t so fucking withholding and that he’d thrown it at the wall instead.

“Are you okay?” Ariadne’s brows are furrowed in concern, one foot in the kitchen now. He forgets sometimes how astute she is, how she acts like she’s not paying attention half the time even though she always is, just to keep people off balance. She’s more unpredictable than Mal that way and only slightly less shameless. 

For a minute he’s tempted to tell her no, actually, he’s not okay, to tell her everything, if only to see if it’s as cathartic as they say, and maybe to see how high her eyebrows will go because he knows she doesn’t expect a straight answer, let alone the whole honest to God truth.

“You don’t have to tell me now, but just think about it,” she says with half a smile. “Might be nice to have someone listen.”

He figures she knows that as far as emotionally repressed types go, he falls somewhere around the _very_ mark. That she knows he gave her a detailed, albeit sloppy, mortifyingly self-pitying rundown of his life story that one time only because he was tripping on the potent combination of being both drunk and high.

“I—” he starts, not sure if he means to say _I will_ or _I’m okay_ , but then the landline rings. It doesn’t ring often and half the time it’s someone calling to ask if he’s open, which they’d know if they bothered to click through the website, although, okay, he concedes that the website is crap. Something else Mal’s pestered him about that, frankly, he doesn’t give into on principle at this point.

“ _Hello, this is Bec Sucré_.”

“One morning without your croissants and I’m suffering from withdrawal, Arthur, what have you done to me.” 

Eames’s voice, like anyone else’s, sounds slightly different—strange even—over the phone, but it’s no less distinct, no less—and he stops right there, before he gets onto a slippery slope with nothing but meringue and Taylor Swift waiting for him at the bottom. What is Eames _thinking_ anyway, calling him up to make these outrageous claims that serve no purpose other than to distract him from more important things.

“Sorry, my croissants don’t come with a money-back guarantee,” he responds, deadpan. Ariadne, still leaned against the doorway, raises her eyebrows and mouths, _Eames?_. He frowns and she smiles smugly for the umpteenth time today before slipping away.

“Well, in that case, how about dinner?”

Arthur blinks. “What?” It’s not that he didn’t hear Eames loud and clear, it’s just— _what_.

“Dinner, with me, tonight, at _Dimanche_. We’ll dine on goldleaf risotto and truffle foam, and talk about early 20th century French literature.”

He didn’t think this phone call could get any more outrageous but leave it to Eames to enthusiastically prove him wrong. He should say no and then immediately hang up to drive the point home. 

Instead he says, “People have _died_ before getting off the waitlist at _Dimanche_ ,” and then feels fucking horrified because he’s pretty sure that sounded more like a _yes, god yes, that sounds wonderful_. 

“It’s lucky we’re not on the waitlist then,” Eames says, voice low and warm and _hopeful_. Arthur clutches the phone so hard his bones ache.

“I can’t, I already have plans.”

There’s a long pause during which he thinks the connection may have cut out.

Then Eames says, evenly, “Okay, maybe another time,” and Arthur bites his tongue, just in case it thinks about betraying him.

That night, true to his word, he has plans. He invites Ariadne over, orders them Chinese, and proceeds to get efficiently and thoroughly wasted.

*

The next morning he thinks he’s dying. A slow, cruel, painful death descending upon every nerve in his body. He’s never been this hungover, not even in college drinking jungle juice and fucking absinthe straight-up. He also thinks it’s probably because he no longer has the stomach or the liver of an eighteen-year-old. He vaguely remembers hugging the toilet and tasting partially digested lo mein sometime during the night, but after sliding the first batch of croissants into the oven, he vomits again, narrowly missing the floor.

He’s still hunched over the trash bin when Ariadne gets in.

“Shit, you look terrible.”

“Ugh, god. Whisper. Please,” he says weakly, returning slowly to an upright position. “Why— _why_ did you let me keep drinking. You. I blame this on you.”

So he’s kind of really fucking unreasonable when he’s hungover but he couldn’t give half a shit right now, especially with Ariadne looking so sober and, well, _sober_.

“I’ll make you some coffee,” she offers sympathetically, dropping her bag on the floor and walking over to Arthur’s espresso machine. “Coffee will make you feel better, it’s scientifically proven, or something. I push this button, right? Does the back just pop out? How much water do I need to put in here? I think I’ll just go to the café down the street.”

“I think that’s wise,” he says through gritted teeth.

The coffee actually does make him feel better, well enough that they don’t open much later than usual, though he’s mortified that they had to open late at all. The one consolation is that Eames still hasn’t come around, because Arthur knows, in his current state, he’d likely do something or say something painfully regrettable. He thinks maybe Eames has given up, having heard something in Arthur’s voice yesterday that left no room for argument. He thinks maybe Eames went back to London without saying goodbye, disappearing from Arthur’s life as suddenly as he’d entered it, like a strong wind had blown him in and then swept him away without leaving a trace.

By two o’clock he’s decided on closing early because, fuck it, he’s gonna go home and sleep for a straight ten hours, what’s the use of being an entrepreneur anyway if he can’t do whatever the hell he wants, when he wants to.

“So this is where the magic happens.”

“ _Jesus Christ_.” Eames is standing, remarkably, in the doorway in an Oxford rolled up to the elbows, jacket-less, tie-less, smiling from ear to ear, and Arthur very nearly drops his 30-pound, thousand-dollar stand mixer on his foot. “You really, seriously, can’t sneak up on people like that.”

“Sorry. I’ll be sure to wear heels next time to sufficiently prepare you,” Eames promises, looking too amused for his own good. “Ariadne let me in on her way out, I hope you don’t mind. Closing early?”

Well, that effectively cancels out all the good karma she’s been collecting since morning if Arthur has anything to say about it.

“Yea, I think I’m—coming down with something,” he gives as an explanation, appropriately in lieu of _I tried to mercilessly drown my thoughts of you in alcohol last night and gave myself the hangover of the century, sleep is now my only escape from this miserable world_.

Eames frowns. Eames frowns like he wants to walk over and feel Arthur’s forehead, make him tea, then tuck him into bed. 

Arthur realizes he’s still carrying the damn mixer and drops it down on the counter with a bang.

“Let me help you clean up,” Eames offers. “Just tell me what to do. Sweeping, taking out the rubbish, I’m versatile.”

“Well, aren’t you just a modern-day Cinderella,” Arthur says before he can stop himself, and, what the _fuck_ is going on.

“Mm,” Eames hums contemplatively, “I do look smashing in blue. And I can do extraordinary things with a feather duster.”

His eyes are glinting, mouth shamelessly suggestive, and it’s wrong on several different levels, but Arthur’s hangover has clearly made him weak-willed.

“You can’t expect me to take you seriously when you say shit like that,” he says faintly, watching the pull of Eames’s shirt across his shoulders as he sets his forearms down on the counter.

“God, no, please don’t. I get my fill of serious by the time I finish my morning coffee, this is my one blessed escape. Anyway, only accountants really ever take things seriously, and I gather you’re not one of those.”

Eames flashes a smile, all teeth, clearly accustomed to charming his way out of all kinds of situations. And into all kinds of bedrooms. 

Arthur firmly shuts down that line of thinking. “I’d call you clever but then there definitely wouldn’t be enough room in here for the two of us and your ego.”

“I knew I could rely on you to take me down a peg or two, darling.”

There it is again, like a slip of the tongue, and Arthur still can’t figure it out, figure Eames out. In fact, none of this makes any goddamn sense. It’s sense that Arthur likes to fall back on. It’s sense that made him think once that he could live out his life as an accountant because he could always count on the numbers to add up. Eames, though, makes him feel completely nonsensical, completely fucking crazy.

“You can put these pans back on the shelves,” he says abruptly, yanking out the clingwrap for the croissant dough. “They’re grouped by material—stainless steel, silicone, glass, and ceramic. Make sure there’s parchment paper under each pan. I’m familiar with every scratch so don’t think I won’t know if you fuck something up.”

“Glutton for order, are we?” Eames has the nerve to sound _fond_. “Let me guess, runs in the family?”

“No,” Arthur pauses, thinking about the house he grew up in, the knick knacks crammed into every corner that had the space and some that didn’t, “my parents wouldn’t know order if it set fire to their front porch. My sister’s not much better. Must be a recessive trait.”

When he doesn’t get a response, he looks up from his clingwrapping. 

Eames is staring at a piece of paper in his hand, a madeleine pan forgotten in the other.

“I was wondering where I’d dropped this. You saved it.”

Eames turns to him, eyes a little bewildered and a little—something else, something that makes Arthur hold his breath for a drawn out moment. Then he frowns. Then—oh, _shit_. A piece of paper. The fucking sketch Ariadne found on the table that day, that sat neglected on one end of the counter until, right after closing, Arthur had slipped it under his madeleine pans because he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. He should’ve known it would come back to bite him in the ass.

“Huh, I forgot that was there. I figured you’d want it back,” he says reasonably, doing what he hopes to God is a respectable job of not sounding completely fucking mortified.

Eames just smiles, like he can see right through Arthur, and walks over to drop it next to Arthur’s work surface, careful to avoid the flour, before returning to his task.

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

Arthur blinks at the sudden 180, then takes a deep, cleansing breath.

“Uh. Yea, she’s in Chicago.” He returns to his croissant dough, feeling a sudden ache for ballparks and lake effects. 

“Older?”

“Yea. Married. Two kids.”

“Are your parents in Chicago, too?”

“No, Phoenix.”

A moment of quiet ensues. “I’m feeling a bit like I’m pulling teeth. We can talk about something else if you want. Or we could just work in companionable silence.”

When he looks up again, Eames’s smile reminds him a little of his own on a bad day. It tells him that Eames knows a thing or two about how family works, though mostly about how it doesn’t, and that he _understands_ if Arthur’s instinct is to shut him out.

Arthur squeezes the dough under his hands. If there’s anything he actively avoids more than talking about his old job, then it’s talking about family, because he always winds up sounding emotionally detached or emotionally damaged, never anything in between. And it didn’t used to be like that; it used to be better, _good_. But then he thinks about Eames rushing out to check on him that day, Eames holding his face, pulling him to shore without asking him why he was drowning, like his fucking knight in shining armor.

“It’s complicated,” he finally says, needlessly maybe, but he doesn’t really know how to start. He’s only ever been good at talking about facts, about certainties. “They never supported this whole bakery thing, and opening it halfway across the world just made it worse. I think at this point they’re just counting on me to crash and burn so I’ll realize I was always better off as an accountant.”

His hands are shaking a little and he fists them against the countertop.

“They haven’t come to see me, not once. Like that’ll mean they’ve given in or something. I just—I don’t know why they’re so— _stuck_ on the idea that I’m living my life the wrong way. Or that there’s a right way. I don’t even fucking know. Fuck.”

This is what happens when he talks about family. He’s peering down a black, gaping abyss one second, a safe distance away from the edge, and the next second he’s falling, tumbling head over feet with nothing to break his momentum.

“If there’s a right way, then I really wish someone had bloody told me about it sooner to spare me the agony of being wrong.” Eames is suddenly standing across from him, arm’s length away, breaking his momentum. “For their sake, I hope they come round. Because you’re marvelous at this, Arthur. You’re _sublime_. You infuse life with a little more taste and texture, and you make people smile doing it.”

Arthur can’t breathe. He can’t fucking breathe and Eames is walking around until the tips of their shoes are almost touching, as if by closing the distance Arthur will see what he sees and _believe_ it.

“That sounds pretty serious,” Arthur manages to say, feeling Eames’s warmth and swaying towards it.

“Deathly serious,” Eames corrects, bringing a hand up to rub a thumb against Arthur’s cheek. “You have flour on your face.”

It makes no fucking sense, Arthur thinks before he responds, “Occupational hazard.”

Then Eames is kissing him—or he’s kissing Eames, it’s all irrelevant because _fuck_ , Eames’s mouth is so warm and stupidly soft, and he’d be lying if he said he hasn’t thought about this, albeit with lackluster imagination. He didn’t think Eames would feel this fucking good pressed against him, chest and thighs _radiating_ heat. He didn’t think his knees would buckle at Eames’s tongue licking at the seam of his lips or at Eames’s fingertips scraping across his nape then down his spine. And when he opens his mouth, Eames tastes him like he’s fucking dying, like it’s their last day on Earth but if this is how it ends, then it’s more than enough. 

Eames groans, low and a little broken, and Arthur shudders against him, backing him against the countertop for leverage as he rocks his hips, wanting more pressure, more heat, more of those sounds rising from Eames’s throat.

“Ah, fuck. God, Arthur—” Eames pulls back just far enough that they can breathe, thumb rubbing at the spot right below Arthur’s ear, making Arthur _tingle_ down to his goddamn toes. “I confess, I’ve wanted to do this since the first day I walked into the shop and you stormed out of the kitchen glowering at me, sounding utterly terrifying speaking your beautiful, razor-sharp French. I realize I didn’t make a stellar first impression but I’ve really been trying my hardest to make it up to you.”

Arthur blinks slowly, frowning, trying to ignore the distraction of Eames’s thumb. “You understood?”

Eames smiles winningly. “I’m clever.”

Not that that matters in the grand scheme of things. What matters is that Eames said he wanted this, and that _this_ didn’t sound at all like kissing Arthur or touching Arthur or fucking Arthur on the kitchen counter, all of which Arthur could absolutely deal with. Instead, _this_ sounded too much like having Arthur, holding onto Arthur and never letting go if he can help it. It makes Arthur feel like he’s being asked to freefall on faith alone, as if gravity’s not a fucking certainty where Eames is from.

So when Eames leans in, he extricates himself and stumbles back.

“I can’t,” he says numbly, and maybe he means _I don’t know how_ , but the way he sees it, that’s just semantics.

Eames looks confused. “What do you mean you can’t?”

“I can’t, all right? This is crazy and it’ll never work and you—” Arthur runs an agitated hand through his hair, licking his lips and—Jesus fuck—tasting Eames on them. “No, you know what, I don’t have to fucking explain myself. I just—I can’t do this. I don’t do this.”

“Arthur—bloody hell,” Eames laughs a little, _laughs_ , and Arthur’s just dumbstruck, “I’m not asking for one sordid night or some kind of arrangement with no strings attached. It was never going to be that way with you. I’m asking for—I’m asking for all the strings. Every last one.”

Eames stares at him, imploring, pulling on him hard and he just digs his heels in.

“You can’t have everything you want,” he says tightly, throwing Eames’s words back in his face. 

It makes him wince visibly, like he’s been struck, but he doesn’t look bitter or angry or ashamed, he just looks _disappointed_. Arthur wants to squeeze his eyes shut, to _run_.

“So that’s it then. You’ve made your choice.” 

“I’m sorry.” It’s a hollow apology if he’s ever heard one, and for a split second he thinks he sees heartbreak before Eames turns and walks away.

*

For about a week he thinks about nothing but the bakery. He pulls an all-nighter learning Flash and Java, and revamps the website. He finds another investor, a guy in real estate who owns an entire block of Île Saint-Louis and wants to branch out, mainly because his wife can’t get enough of Arthur’s chocolate tarts. He adds mille-feuille to the menu to the delight of his regulars, three flavors because, what the hell, he might as well dream bigger if he’s already committed himself to making 729-layer pastry dough. He lets Mal find him potential assistants but draws the line at advertising it as a _sous chef_ ; they’re not competing in Iron Chef for fuck’s sake.

By the following Tuesday he’s so exhausted he nods off a little at the stove and almost burns his butter, but his head is blissfully blank. The kitchen smells rich and sweet, and everything is perfectly uncomplicated.

Then a copy of _Le Monde_ is suddenly thrust in front of his face and he blinks.

“I found today’s business headline pretty interesting,” Ariadne says airily while her eyes try to bore a hole through Arthur’s skull.

He raises his eyebrows. “Business? Headline? Who are you and what have you done with Ariadne.”

“Just _look_ , you asshole.”

He looks. 

_GAE International acquires ÉnergieFranc for unprecedented 3.78 billion Euros; Edward Eames replaces father as chairman and CEO._

The boldfaced print, crisp and unmistakable, makes a week’s worth of not thinking, not caring swirl neatly down the drain. It makes his heart shoot up to his throat and then plummet to his feet.

“Go after him, Arthur. Go after him before it’s too late, or I swear to God I will do it for you.”

_I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to be an artist. I could try to change the bloody world. The trickiest thing about life is deciding what you’re willing to give up._

“I can’t,” he says weakly, smelling burnt butter.

There’s silence, and then, “I know you’re in love with him. That night, when you were drunk off your ass, spilling whiskey into your lap, you told me. You said it over and over again with this look in your eyes like it’d be easier to stop a speeding train than stop being in love with him.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” he whispers, closing his eyes. The ground beneath him, perilously thin, starts to crumble.

Ariadne places a hand on his shoulder and turns him around, eyes strong and steady, taking a deep breath.

“I know—I know you’ve been disappointed by the people you love. But I’ve seen the way he looks at you, Arthur, and, god, it’s like, I don’t know, it’s like watching the ending to your favorite movie that still makes you cry after the hundredth time. And you watch it _because_ you know it’ll make you cry, because it’s so stupidly beautiful. Ugh, am I making sense? I’m usually so kick ass at analogies.”

She gives him a small smile but he’s too busy panicking, too busy thinking it might actually be too late, which would mean he’s managed to fuck it all up _and_ lose his chance at something _good_.

“Oh, god. Oh, fuck. I have to—I need to go. I have to go.”

“Wait, Arthur, I—” but he’s already out the door, sprinting down the street, panicking and sprinting, lungs on fire, until he reaches the main avenue. At which point he realizes he has no idea where Eames is, where he’s staying, if he’s even still in the _country_. 

He works on slowing his breathing, pulling himself together because he excels in high-pressure situations, goddamn it. He pulls out his phone and gets the most expensive hotel in Paris on the line. 

“ _Hello, sorry to trouble you, I’m the new personal accountant for Edward Eames but I can’t seem to reach him at the office or on his mobile and I really don’t want to be fired on my first day. Could you please tell me—_ ”

“ _Regrettably, Mr. Eames is not staying with—_ ”

He hangs up and tries the Four Seasons.

In between the fifth and sixth one, Ariadne calls.

“Where the fuck are you? Get back here, Eames just walked in. Jesus.” Then she hangs up on him.

When he pulls open the door to the bakery, he figures it couldn’t really have worked out any other way.

Eames is wearing something appropriately hideous and looking appropriately beautiful doing it, smile reserved like he doesn’t want to set himself up again for failure.

Arthur’s heart clenches so hard he has to stop in his tracks for a second.

“Hi.”

“Hello.” Eames rubs at the back of his neck, eyes leaving Arthur’s briefly before returning. “I’m flying back to London in a few hours and I thought I’d just pop in one last time to—”

“Don’t go,” Arthur blurts out before he can second guess himself. “I—fuck.”

“Look, you don’t have to say anything, I’d rather—”

“Shut up, just shut up and listen.” He’s no good at this but damn it if he isn’t going to try anyway, even if it comes out nonsensical and clumsy and a fucking mess.

Eames blinks and falls silent.

“That day in the kitchen—I—shit, I was lying, okay? I was lying because I was scared and stupid, and selfish, and I wanted to take the easy way out. But that doesn’t mean,” he swallows, steeling himself for the fallout. “it doesn’t mean I don’t want this.”

Eames doesn’t speak, doesn’t react. He just stands there, like he’s waiting for something, for more proof, so Arthur tries one last time, because he’s never wanted something so much in his life.

“I’m not willing to give this up. Don’t let me give this up.” He throws out his line and waits with bated breath for Eames to catch it, to save him.

“Oh, darling,” Eames finally says, ever so quietly, but Arthur feels the silence shattering into a thousand glorious fragments. “You have me. You had me from the very start.”

This time when Eames pulls Arthur goes to him, reaches out, pressing his palm above Eames’s heart and then sliding it up to curve it around his neck. And then Eames is kissing him, kissing him until they run out of breath and Arthur’s clutching on with both hands in beautiful freefall. 

“I’ve been selfish, too, I admit,” Eames murmurs, thumb brushing the corner of Arthur’s mouth. “And scared, scared of wanting too much. Wanting to make you tea in the mornings, proper English tea in a proper teapot, wanting to see you in my kitchen with nothing but an apron on, baking croissants, wanting to call you every afternoon when work has made me lose the will to live to hear your delightful sarcasm and feel better about the world.” Then he pauses. “I’m being frighteningly specific.”

Arthur just laughs. He laughs, watching Eames’s smile transform from tentative to incandescent, and it feels so fucking good.

“I like specificity.”

“I’ll keep going then, shall I? I haven’t even started on the really raunchy stuff.”

“I’m all ears,” he says before leaning in to kiss Eames again, thinking that maybe, just maybe they could have everything they want if they’re brave enough to take it.


End file.
